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Sheila Lukins, 66, Dies; Awakened Taste Buds

Sheila Lukins, who, as an owner of the Silver Palate food shop and an author of four Silver Palate cookbooks, helped usher in the new American cooking of the 1980s, died on Sunday at age 66, at home in Manhattan.

The cause was brain cancer, diagnosed three months ago, said her daughter Annabel Lukins Stelling.

The Silver Palate opened in 1977 on New York’s Upper West Side, when few Americans had heard of raspberry vinegar or ratatouille. “Entertaining” was still a wifely responsibility, and cooking as a hobby was just becoming popular among educated women like Ms. Lukins. She had graduated from New York University in 1970, moved to London with her husband, Richard Lukins, from whom she was divorced, and took classes at the Cordon Bleu cooking school.

On returning to New York, Ms. Lukins, by then the mother of two small daughters, ran a catering business out of her apartment in the Dakota — called, in the racy spirit of the time, the Other Woman Catering Company.

“Back then, New York bachelors would throw dinner parties, but all they really wanted to do was pick out the wine,” said Julee Rosso, a marketing executive who became Ms. Lukins’s partner in the Silver Palate.

The partners spotted a niche that had been created by the emergence of working women, who were interested in good food but lacked the time to produce it. “In my neighborhood, the supermarkets closed at 5, because women were home during the day — and if they weren’t, their maids were,” Ms. Rosso said.

Photo

Sheila Lukins, an author of "Silver Palate" cookbooks, in 1997.Credit
Nancy Siesel/The New York Times

From a 156-square-foot shop and kitchen at Columbus Avenue and 73rd Street, the women and their recipes — Mediterranean chicken salad, curried butternut squash soup, spicy carrot cake — intrigued, and then guided, the increasingly adventurous palates of New Yorkers.

In 1979, Patricia Wells, writing in The New York Times, called it a “tiny food shop with big ideas,” referring to its handmade zucchini pickles and blueberry preserves, made from local produce whenever possible. Silver Palate products were the first foods sold at Saks Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, reflecting an upswing of interest in cooking by affluent residents. (Dean & DeLuca in SoHo and E.A.T. on the Upper East Side, both of which opened within two years of the Silver Palate, were exploring similar cuisine.)

The shop reached a national audience in 1982 with the publication of “The Silver Palate Cookbook” (Workman), which has sold more than two and a half million copies. Its recipes, like chicken Marbella (with olives, prunes and capers) and blackberry mousse (garnished with trendy kiwi fruit), became dinner-party classics for a generation of modern cooks.

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The book’s big, sophisticated flavors were produced from accessible ingredients and modest cooking skills, not from French techniques or canned cream soups. Editors admonished the authors for their exuberant seasoning style. “No, girls, no,” a copy editor wrote on one recipe. “No one puts 25 cloves of garlic in ratatouille!” The authors retested the recipe and changed it, calling instead for two tablespoons of minced garlic.

Ms. Lukins, who was an artist and collector of photography, drew the illustrations for that book and ones she later wrote with Ms. Rosso and alone, including, “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook,” “The New Basics Cookbook” and “All Around the World Cookbook.” In all, her books have sold more than seven million copies.

The Silver Palate was sold in 1988, and the store closed in 1993, but the name continues on a line of specialty foods including sauces, condiments and oatmeal, some of which are still made according to Ms. Lukins’s recipes.

Since 1986, Ms. Lukins had been food editor of Parade magazine, writing a monthly column.

Sheila Gail Block Lukins was born in Philadelphia in 1942 and spent her childhood in Norwalk and Westport, Conn. Besides Ms. Stelling, of Boulder, Colo., she is survived by another daughter, Molly Burke of New York City; two grandchildren; a sister, Elaine Yanell of Westport, Conn., and a brother, Harvey Block of Branchburg, N.J.

Correction: September 2, 2009

An obituary on Monday about Sheila Lukins, a co-author of “The Silver Palate Cookbook,” which helped introduce many Americans to simple, highly flavored cooking, referred incorrectly to the book’s recipe for ratatouille, which a book editor said had too much garlic in an earlier version. The published recipe calls for two tablespoons of minced garlic, not the 25 cloves that were in the earlier version.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A17 of the New York edition with the headline: Sheila Lukins, 66; Awakened Taste Buds. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe